Eat Meat or Plants? The FUTUREFOOD Podcast

Why are we producing this podcast?

Eating is personal. We all have specific ideas about what goes into our belly and why. For some, it’s driven by health. For others, passion or need. Yet for all the choices we have about what to eat, eaters take sides, and they don’t always agree with each other.

The podcast explores eaters and their passion for food

Big Food uses media and money to influence our food choices. That means that soda companies and industrial farming trade organizations spend big ad dollars to convince us to make unhealthy food choices leading to more hunger, more obesity, and more diabetes. Big Food’s influence campaigns create demand for food that is wasteful to produce and hurts the planet, contributing to soil depletion, overuse of water, and climate change. It is social engineering on a grand scale.

We produce enough food to feed everyone, but because of distribution problems 815 million people in the world are undernourished and one-third of global food production is lost, destroyed or wasted.

There is a solution. The food that is good for us is also good for the planet.

All we have to do is encourage people to eat good food, fresh food, more fruits and vegetables, food that doesn’t come in a package. We all need to explore different ways of eating.

Eat less meat?

Americans eat a lot of meat, about 222 pounds per year. The world meat consumption average is 75 pounds per year. Meat requires water, fuel, land in greater amounts than plants do, per acre of yield. Nearly 30% of the available surface of Earth is used by livestock or for growing food for animals.

There is a first step that we can all take, whether we are carnivores, omnivores, or vegetarians: We can be more adventurous. We can try different kinds of foods. We can explore food cultures, try plant-based foods, enjoy meat but less of it.

We need a social engineering project to help eaters see the wisdom of becoming more adventurous in what they choose to eat. Futurefood is that project.

We love everybody

We welcome all eaters to the podcast. We want people to branch out and explore a variety of food choices. Food trucks are rolling culinary democracy. We celebrate chefs who experiment. We study the science of food production but honor the way people really eat and what they really enjoy eating.

A podcast about solutions

Futurefood is a podcast about solutions. It is accessible and fun. It allows people to try food solutions on for size. Let’s say you would like to try eating less meat. The podcast can introduce you to a plant-based chef, restaurant, or food truck. Would you like to see if there is really a difference between grass-fed beef and an animal that has been fed corn? The podcast can show you where to find both kinds. Do you want to step out on the cutting edge and try lab meat, seaweed, or crickets? The podcast will lead you to them. If a plant-based diet sounds weird, the podcast can make it less weird by familiarizing you with delicious options.

Food thrives on innovation

Innovations in food have often come from the “top” — from visionary chefs. Alice Waters champions local ingredients. Jamie Oliver has pioneered food education in schools. Dan Barber is advancing a farm-to-table approach that merges farm, table, and a deep sense of food’s history. Scientist-chefs and chef-scientists like Nathan Myhrvold and Wylie Dufresne have looked at food through a scientific lens and taken eaters out to the fringes of gastronomy.

As significant as many of these chefs and innovators are, as much as they have driven change in food and food sourcing, most people don’t know their names. When people want to try new food or change the way they eat, few of them will go to a high-end restaurant and drop hundreds of dollars per person.

No, they will try something easier. They will check out a food truck. They will try an ethnic cuisine they haven’t sampled. They might encounter tofu for the first time, a bratwurst, or a tofu dog. They will experience innovative and sometimes crazy blends of cuisines and cultures, like sushi burritos.

Futurefood is the podcast that makes more food choices accessible to eaters.

Our format

Each podcast episode takes us on an adventure. In a 2-5 minute video segment that serves as a promo, we will visit a food truck, restaurant, or food producer. Our hosts will interview a chef or other food innovator on location, as they sample their favorite food.

We won’t be afraid to “take sides” from episode to episode. Some episodes will be vegetarian adventures. Others will be a meat-eaters paradise. Our audience will experience what it is like to be a vegetarian, a carnivore, or an omnivore.

Passions will run high, much like when people compare Chicago pizza with New York pizza or Memphis barbecue with North Carolina barbecue. There will be drama! But we are also interested in going deep into the issues of eating and producing food today.

Futurefood will provide a long-form interview with a chef or food innovator. This will be done as a studio podcast, with audio and video recorded. Our audience will have the choice: Listen to the long form story as an audio podcast, or watch it as a studio-style talk show.

Why is Futurefood different?

There are terrific foodie podcasts in production now. Food Republic, Mother Jones’s Bite Podcast, The Sporkful, NPR’s The Salt all demonstrate that there is a thriving audience for food topics. Happy Cow, a leading vegan website and restaurant index, has 3.5 million visitors per month and a newsletter with 150,000 subscribers. The hashtag #foodtruck on Instagram has more than three million posts.

Futurefood draws upon this vast audience, but with a difference. We want people to explore new ways to eat. We want them to meet new cuisines on the street, in food trucks, and with cutting-edge cuisine developed by chefs. The podcast respects the need for changes in the way we eat and also the exploration we will need to get there.

About Red Cup Agency

Red Cup Agency produces podcasts about education, fitness, tech, parenting, and food and wine. Our production history includes EdTech NOW, a popular podcast about education and tech, the Brandboom Success Podcast, a multi-episode podcast about fashion, retail, and tech, and Cult/Tech, a popular podcast about the culture of technology which averaged 4500 downloads per month on SoundCloud alone. We have produced ten episodes of the Futurefood podcast. Baby Crazy, a podcast about parenting, goes into production in September 2018. Lee Schneider is Red Cup’s Editor-In-Chief.

What Future food offers to sponsors

listener feedback – audiences can be heard and contribute on a listener feedback line

available on all podcast platforms and video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo

articles on our website

Promotional Strategies

The podcast will be promoted across our Red Cup Agency web properties, including our websites, Medium publication, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and mailing lists. Each episode will be posted with show notes including key takeaways, a transcript, and links mentioned. Sponsor banner ads are available on the website and in our mailing list newsletters.

Listener Engagement

Using Facebook groups, Twitter and LinkedIn, the show will regularly ask for listener feedback. We will ask questions on the show and in promo materials and listeners will record their answers for broadcast. Listeners on the Anchor platform can respond with a voice memo. There is also a listener feedback phone line set up for recordings.

Demographics and Reach

73 million Americans listen to podcasts each month.

Source: Infinite Dial 18.

Podcast listeners spend more time listening to podcasts than other audio sources. 65% listen to podcasts in the car, taking the place of radio. 94% say they listen to most or every episode of podcasts they subscribe to. Sources: Edison Research, “Share of the Ear 2016,” and Edison Research, “The Podcast Consumer 2017.”

Though they may skip ads in other media, podcast listeners pay attention to podcast ads. 82% say they sometimes pay attention to ads. 70% say the products and services advertised on a podcast are relevant. 65% are more willing to consider purchasing those products and services. Sources: Comscore/Wondery Survey 2016 and IAB/Edison Research Advertising Study 2016.

Join us

We are accepting sponsorships for the new production season of Futurefood. We have sponsor packages to fit every budget and marketing goal. Sponsors can receive a pre-roll host endorsement at the top of every episode. Our host can also record an interview with a sponsor or a sponsor can record their own commercial spot scripted by Red Cup Agency. Sponsors receive banner ads on our website, promotion in social media and in email newsletters.

About the Producer, Lee Schneider

Lee is Editor-In-Chief at Red Cup Agency, a digital publisher that produces podcasts and ebooks. The agency is known for its work with leaders in fitness and food, educators, social activists, and nonfiction authors. His clients have included large companies like Nike and smaller startups that have raised millions of dollars in angel and Series A rounds.

He has been a podcast producer/host on the Future of Food Podcast, the Cult/Tech Podcast, and the TechSmart Podcast, and a producer on EdTech NOW, the Smidge Wines Podcast, and The Brandboom Podcast. He launched his first podcast in 2009.

He is an instructor at the USC School of Architecture, teaching literacy in media for graduate-level architecture and design students.

Lee has more than 20 years of experience in journalism. He has been a writer for Good Morning America, a producer for Dateline NBC, and a producer and executive producer on many hours of programming for The History Channel, The Learning Channel, A&E, the Travel Channel, The Food Network, Bravo, and others.